


Promise me a place

by Jackidy



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst and Feels, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Memory Loss, Not Beta Read, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan Manga Spoilers, Song Inspired, regrets and self reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 11:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30088425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackidy/pseuds/Jackidy
Summary: Jean never remembered him.No matter how many times they met; it would play out the same. A smart comment. A retaliation. A fight that results in a bloodied lip and broken nose, a budding friendship that almost always bloomed into something deep and meaningful until Eren would ultimately destroy it, with a taste of ash in his mouth and the look of utter betrayal.
Relationships: Jean Kirstein & Eren Yeager, Jean Kirstein/Eren Yeager
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	Promise me a place

**Author's Note:**

> 2015 called, it wants its SNK love back. I don't really go here anymore but pure self indulgence after the latest chapter (138) hit. Song referenced in this and heavily inspired this is house of memories by P!ATD.

Through all his lives, Jean Kirstein had been the one constant.

Whether fleeting or permanent, the other had been a prevailing anchor in each time line. It’s almost comforting, Eren thinks, that no matter what happens, their fates always align to creature a story of a picture-perfect tragedy, hesitating outside of the venue with a level of anxiety all his previous selves would have scoffed at.

Jean never remembered him.

No matter how many times they met; it would play out the same. A smart comment. A retaliation. A fight that results in a bloodied lip and broken nose, a budding friendship that almost always bloomed into something deep and meaningful until Eren would ultimately destroy it, with a taste of ash in his mouth and the look of utter betrayal. He’s used to the cycle, used to the wheel of fate forever turning as a vicious form of penance for his atrocities from their first life.

He longs to break the wheel, to break every spoke, to break the circle that fate had so politely laid out for him if only to free Jean from their curse. It’s mindless sentiment, he thinks, finally gaining the courage to push open the door and enter, senses immediately flooded with the smell of cheap drinks and sweat, the glare of the lights that illuminated the small stage and the thrumming of music so loud he’s almost certain he’d have vibrated across the floor sticky from years of spilt alcohol.

Maybe he shouldn’t have come, maybe he should have. Maybe he should swallow down his nerves with liquor and cigarettes, maybe he should avoid those crutch-like vices and face his fate once again because he’s more or less signed the contract once more just by stepping foot in the building. They meet. They fight. They become friends. They make whispered promises too each other that he knows they won’t keep. They part ways when Eren inadvertently causes Jean’s death.

Eren doesn’t have to be a genocidal horror to do that anymore, it just happens so the gods can remind him of the monster he once was.

Titans. The stake. A knife to the gut and the metallic stench of blood and gunpowder. He sees every death in his dreams, the nightmares that sneak upon him and serve to tighten the vice grip of regret and guilt all the more tighter on his heart and throat, fingernails always tearing into skin in a foolish bid to remove the iron tight grip. His fantasies are his legacy, the positive ones featuring a plethora of colours and friends, filled with laughter and memories of skin on skin, whispered nothings and fond insults.

His legacy is also a broken body and a look of betrayal.

Jean can always be found in arts, painters, musicians, crafting and carpentry. Talented hands that held the duality of being able to creature works of art yet also destroy with the slightest touch, they always ran cold and nails always rough from years of biting them whenever self-doubt stirred within his stomach. He knows Jean, maybe even more than Jean knows himself because Jean was consistent. Jean was the one thing that never changed.

A singer this time, a singer with a band that held faces both familiar and strange to him, a shaky recognition of Marco who only graced the life cycles on occasion. Much like Mikasa, much like Armin and the rest of the survey corps and those his first self had condemned to death, even the…his cult, none of them aware and all reminders of his sins.

He’d hoped someone had remembered, the fear of someone less important than the singer remembering more comforting than Jean remembering. In every time line, during every turn of the wheel, Jean was important and as much as Eren wanted to break the wheel he’d prefer the tawny haired man to remain ignorant of his crimes against him.

“ _Those thoughts of past lovers, they’ll always haunt me._ ” The words catch him off guard, Eren putting it at first down to coincidence, to his guilty conscience craving something he both did and didn’t deserve. He looks to the stage at last, finally focusing on the singer instead of the band around him, focusing on the fingers playing the keyboard as opposed to Jean’s face. “ _I wish I could believe you’d never wrong me._ ”

He needs to leave, needs to escape, only his feet are rooted into the sticky wood, ever the deer in the headlights as the intensity in Jean’s voice increased. The emotion is too real, a level of hurt in it that Eren could only hope he hadn’t caused, hope it was an ugly, unfortunate coincident. Heart break and betrayal playing on vocal cords as that all too familiar sensation of choking crept around his neck, squeezing his windpipe painfully closed.

_“Then will you remember me in the same way…”_

Hazel meets green from across the crowd, not the blank look of a stranger but rather a flash of enraged recognition before simmering down to something strange, something foreign that Eren didn’t quite recognise. Bile swells from his stomach, a hasty swallowing of it back down and clenched hands as Jean holds the look, as is daring Eren to look away and declare himself a coward.

Under the sheer scrutiny of his gaze, Eren wishes he was capable of declaring himself one, wishes he had turned and ran with his tail between his legs before the singer, before his fated partner or every lifetime confirmed his worst fear.

“ _As I **remember** you._”


End file.
